Turning the Revolution Islamist

IPT News
April 1, 2011

http://www.investigativeproject.org/2733/turning-the-revolution-islamist

The “Arab Spring” has been synonymous with secular and peaceful demonstrators taking to the streets of the Middle East and, in some cases, taking up arms to fight for lost freedoms.

However, the latest issue of al-Qaida’s Inspire Magazine, as well as the rise of renewed Salafist movements in the revolutionary states, suggest that religious ultraconservatives have no intention of ceding the future. The revolutions may have been secular, but the character of new governments is still up for grabs.

Salafist Islam, in both its violent and peaceful incarnations, believes that Islam has moved away from its roots and that Muslims are in dire need of re-Islamization of daily life, politics, economics, and culture. To restore the lost Islamic empire of the caliphate, groups like al-Qaida turn to violent jihad, while Salafists in Saudi Arabia fund the growth of their movement throughout the world.

Rather than interpret largely secular revolutions as their end, Salafists view the fall of dictators as the first step on the road to a new caliphate. The revolutionaries have cleared the path, and whatever will come after them will be less resistant to a message of political Islam or to violent takeover.

“The biggest barrier between the mujahidin and freeing al-Aqsa [Jersualem] were the tyrant rulers,” writer Yahya Ibrahim noted in his introductory article to the latest issue of Inspire. “Now that the friends of America and Israel are being mopped out one after the other, our aspirations are great that the path between us and al-Aqsa [Jerusalem] is clearing up.”

“Another line that is being pushed by Western leaders is that because the protests in Egypt and Tunisia were peaceful, they proved al-Qaida – which calls for armed struggle – to be wrong. That is another fallacy,” Ibrahim argues. “Al-Qaida is not against regime changes through protests but is against the idea that the change should be only through peaceful means to the exclusion of the use of force.”

“It is our opinion that the revolutions that are shaking the thrones of dictators are good for the Muslims, good for the mujahidin and bad for the Imperialists of the West and their henchmen in the Muslim world.”
For Anwar al-Awlaki, an influential al-Qaida ideologue, clearing out the tyrants means greater freedom of movement and recruiting.

“We do not know yet what the outcome [of the revolutions] would be, and we do not have to,” he writes. “Regardless of the outcome, whether it is an Islamic government or the likes of [Egyptian presidential candidates] al-Baradi, Amr Mousa or another military figure; whatever this outcome is, our mujahidin brothers in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and the rest of the Muslim world will get a chance to breathe again after three decades of suffocation.”

Awlaki also argues that an end to fear opens the way for peaceful Salafi activists to have a voice. “For the scholars and activists of Egypt to be able to speak again freely, it would represent a great leap forward for the mujahidin.”

The fall of the regimes has meant an end to fear among other Salafist groups, who are no longer afraid to express their ideologies or to mobilize support among the people. They argue that the people should give Islam a chance to rule, when secular regimes have only brought corruption and unemployment, shame and military defeat.

“These events are paving the way for a greater thing to come. They are paving the way for a great Islam that is coming with force because the world is in need of leadership,” Dr. Muhammad Musa Al-Sharif, Salafi cleric and assistant professor in the Department of Islamic Studies in King Abdul Aziz University, viewers of Saudi Arabia’s Iqra TV on Feb. 25. “The current leadership – Communism, capitalism, and so on – has gone bankrupt. Only Islam is left to lead the world… Islamic leadership is coming whether people like it or not.”

In Egypt, where religious opposition to the former regime was more organized than its secular counterparts, the effects are being felt.

“Their rhetoric hasn’t changed but the new Egypt allows them to express it freely, even though it may not be welcome by all,” al-Jazeera’s Zeina Khodr reports from Alexandria, Egypt. “Salafists were never involved in politics, just like other groups under the Mubarak regime, they were suppressed. Now religious leaders are explaining to their supporters the need for political participation, to create the Egypt they want.”

“There is an ideological battle at the heart of the struggle to fill the ideological vacuum. It may be a new Egypt, but it is an Egypt that has still not been defined.” Khodr explains, as the program shows concerned secular activists trying to counter rising Salafist activism among the less educated. “There is a real fear, they say, Islamic groups could rise to power,” Khodr states.

Some say the threat of a Salafi takeover is exaggerated and that the rise of Western democracy in the Arab world will drown the radical agenda.